Guardian di Angelo
by Holly Chase
Summary: "Are you my Guardian Angel?" How one seven-year-old girl thawed the son of Hades' heart.


**A/N: This idea suddenly struck me, I wrote this in a hurry before going riding so please excuse any grammatical/spelling/writing-full-stop errors although feel free to point them out in a nice, NON-FLAMING review. **

_**Guardian di Angelo:**_

Nico di Angelo was not going to cry. He didn't cry and he wasn't going to start now. The teenager crept stealthily across the room, beeping monitors and wheezed breathing covering any sort of noise he might have made. Young children were asleep on either side of him. A small boy with several pipes connecting him to the machine that was not doubt keeping him alive stirred slightly and Nico felt a twang at his heart as the girl next to him gave a whimper of pain. Sparking white sheets shifted as breath after breath was forced into a pair of twins on his other side. Wilting flowers made the air smell like death and sickness, two smells that Nico knew well. He hated hospitals, from the sweeping curtains to the kind doctors; he put it down to traumatic experiences at an early age. He didn't like dentists either. Or cab drivers. Nico shook his head from its ADHD fuzz and began to search the room again.

Each time Nico passed a coughing child he winced and as he gently pried a little boy's arm from a bleeding wound it was all Nico could do not to be sick. He was sure the memories of the suffering children would stay with him all his life, and most probably his death too as that was just the kind of luck he had. Why, oh why did the stupid arrowhead of Cupid's have to end up here? Nico was sure there were plenty of places in America that a small piece of metal in the shape of a heart would be welcomed. It was just Fortuna that he'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time; Nico cursed Octavian under his breath as he moved into the adjoining room.

_Stupid augur_, he thought as he studied a small crack in the plastered wall._ Oracles are way cooler and they don't have to rip up teddies._ Nico still hadn't forgiven the blond legacy of Apollo.

"Hello," a small voice rasped from the bed, three away from the one he was leaning against. Nico straightened up; he had to stop thinking while searching for stuff, it just made him lose track of where he was. Like that time in the Labyrinth when Minos had guided him through the snake pits and triggered corridors completely blind to the world. The ancient king of Crete had helped him so much when he had been a frightened kid, fleeing camp for the first time after his sister's death; his only companion who listened and 'sympathized' or so he had thought, so it had been hard to realize that he had turned against him. The only reason Nico had stuck with the ghost for so long was because of his obsession with bringing back Bianca. Nico opened his heavily lidded eyes to look at a small dark-haired dark-eyed girl. "Hello," she said again. Nico once again cursed, even quieter than before, his extraordinarily talent at noticing absolutely nothing whilst thinking.

"Er, hi." he said evasively skirting around the metal crib and brushing back the pearly white curtains to get a better look at the girl. He immediately wished he hadn't, blood normally wasn't too much of a thing; the whole 'son of Hades' thing meant Nico was pretty much used to gore plus, Roman war games were usually extremely violent, even more so than at Camp Half-Blood although campers generally arrived in worse condition as there was no vicious she-wolf to train them earlier on in life. But small girls always had sparked a protective instanced, Nico put it down to him being amazingly heroic, therapists put it down to having an unstable childhood. Blood: lots of it. Gauze was wrapped around her shoulder but it did little to stop the red liquid pouring from what Nico supposed must be a gaping wound. Nico stumbled backwards, catching his jacket of the bedside table and spinning him around it a figure of eight. Nico gripped the treacherous table beside him and the little girl blinked up at him. She didn't seem at all surprised to see a teenage boy creeping through the hospital ward as she regarded him with clever eyes.

"Are you my Guardian Angel?" she asked him in her soft voice. Nico was so surprised that he couldn't speak for a moment.

"What?" Nico couldn't believe his ears; did she think he _looked_ like any sort of angel? He glanced some important looking sheets on at the foot of her bed. Nico assumed they were important because of the _Emergency Patient_ stamped across in bolded red ink; a couple of sentences caught his eye.

_Name: Sophie Malaika_

_Age: Seven _

_Admission: Shootings… _

Nico's attention was abruptly diverted from the papers as the girl, Sophie, spoke again.

"What are you doing?" Sophie inquired, curiously lifting her head. "What are you reading? Can I see too?" Nico looked back at the little girl in the white sheeted bed and sighed. She was so very young, but he could already feel death beginning to fill the air. Jumping from the dark, bloodied corners of the hospital where it had lurked. Nico exhaled again, and began to slowly back away as Sophie rolled in the covers, perhaps he could slip away. What was the chance the arrowhead would be in this room anyway? "Where are you going?" Sophie propped herself up against several white cushions.

"Er," Nico began.

"If you're my Guardian Angel then you can't just go away," Sophie said in a mater-of-fact tone of voice before falling to a fit of coughing that racked her thin frame Nico hesitantly stepped towards her. "My Guardian Angel has to stay with me," she finished staring up at him with pleading eyes. "Are you my Guardian Angel?"

Nico had never approved of lying to kids; it started off with Santa Clause and before you knew it you were telling them how an evil Grinch would destroy the world if they didn't eat their greens (not that the latter mattered to Nico, much). Nico didn't really like lying, once again Nico cursed Fortuna; it was just his luck that he was chosen to be the go between who couldn't belong anywhere because he had to lie. Just because he didn't like it didn't mean he couldn't do it, a little like tidying-up.

"Yeah," Nico ruffled Sophie's hair. "I'm your Guardian di Angelo, Sophie." The little girl's face lit up with delight.

"You know my name!" She coughed and Nico pressed his finger to his lips, surreptitiously cocking his head from side to side. Sophie nodded her head in understanding and lowered her voice to a whisper. "I knew it," she said triumphantly, "I knew I had a Guardian thingamabob."

"A Guardian di Angelo," Nico corrected sitting in the swivel chair at the head of the crib and spinning around a couple of times. "We're different from Angels. And – don't tell them this – we're much better," Sophie giggled.

"What's the difference then, Guardian di Angelo?"

"Call me Nico," Nico invited settling back in the chair. Sophie tested out the name a couple of times, pronouncing it in several accents each of which made his name sound less like Nico and more like Nyk-oah. Once Sophie had stopped laughing she said his name with the correct pronunciation and, to Nico's surprise, even managed the Italian flourish that his mother and Bianca had used.

"Nico _sounds_ like the name of a Guardian di Angelo," Sophie declared after a moment of deep contemplation. Nico was greatly relieved at this, he had no idea what a Guardian di Angelo's name would actually sound like. "But you didn't answer my question, what's the difference between a Guardian Angel and a Guardian di Angelo?" Nico thought for a moment, composing what he hoped would be a believable enough story with not too many loop-holes.

"When a very good person dies, they join the Guardian Angels and for the life-span of a single person, they get assigned to little boy or girl and look out for them. We Guardian di Angelos however, only formed when a special type of child dies, instead of looking out from behind the veil between the living and the dead, we get brought back to the world, as I am now, and we have to find our child."

"Like you found me," Sophie breathed, Nico nodded.

"Yes, just like I found you. It can take a very long time to find your child, months or even years but at some point, their paths cross. Like the Angels we are invisible to you at first, I found you several months ago."

"Why couldn't I see you sooner?" Sophie asked shaking her head and causing her hair to stick up at odd angles.

Nico breathed out taking Sophie's cold hand in his, "Guardian di Angelos can meet with their child only once."

"Then why now?" Sophie's eyes were pleading, she knew the answer but Nico didn't want to say it.

"In this case, Guardian di Angelos are much weaker than Guardian Angels. We have no power over the lives of mortals; we cannot save you, unlike Guardian Angles who can prevent the death of their child."

"Oh," Sophie's hand went limp and Nico felt death creep even closer. The blood seemed to drizzle from her wound and… Nico felt the breath catch in his throat, was she glowing? Yes, Sophie's bandaged arm was blazing brighter and brighter with golden light. _Oh no,_ Nico came to a conclusion that he really didn't like,_ oh please Zeus no._

"But, Sophie," Nico moved his hand up her arm. "I was sent here to take something from you before saying good-bye; something that was given to you with a cruel purpose." He reached for her shoulder but Sophie's hand got there first, she slid a delicate hand under the gauze and tugged. Nico heard a sickening sucking noise and the sound of snapping skin and then something wet and cold and jagged was being pressed into his hand. Cupid's arrowhead. Cupid's stupid arrowhead. Then forgetting his no swearing around children rule Nico let out a long stream of cuss words.

Sophie slipped her hand back into his, it was slimy and grisly and clinging scraps of flesh hugged her nails. The beeping sound that Nico had grown accustomed to hearing faltered and Sophie let out a choked breath.

"Nico," she whispered hoarsely and Nico had to bend down to hear her words. "Thank you for being my Guardian di Angelo, even if you couldn't save me. I'm glad, because I got to meet you,"

"Hey," Nico said softly, a sudden thought nagging at his brain. "You never said, what happened?"

"Shouldn't you already know that?" Sophie frowned up at him, Nico shook his head slowly and she bit her lip before speaking. "They didn't like my Daddy, which is weird…" Nico caught his breath.

"Why is it weird, Sophie?" Her brows furrowed and the machine missed another two beeps.

"It's weird, because I don't have a Daddy," Nico looked at the little girl and before his eyes she seemed to morph, her hair grew a little longer and her skin gain some colour until she looked like Bianca, he blinked the changes away. "Mummy says my Daddy is dead, I think. It's quite confusing," Nico began to rummage through his backpack.

"What was the shooter like?" he asked.

"He was dressed like a policeman and he had a big dog," she paused to cough for a couple of seconds. "I like dogs,"

"I like dogs too, Sophie." He said quietly pulling a brown paper bag from the phone pocket that never actually held a phone.

"He talked to us for a while -" Sophie began.

"About?"

"What about?" Sophie looked puzzled and Nico had to prevent himself from bashing his head against the bedside table.

"No; about what? What did he talk about?" His head began to hurt as Nico attempted to explain his question, Sophie blinked uncertainly and Nico was just about to rephrase when she spoke hesitantly again:

"I'm not sure," her eyes closed and the machine fell silent for seven beats then her lids fluttered open again. "I'm not sure," she repeated. Nico rephrased.

"What did the policeman say?" Sophie glared at him, the fact that such a tiny, gullible child could glare at all surprised Nico and he was relieved when the scowl packed a lot less force than a butterfly batting its wings. An image of Bianca's scowl blotted his vision for a moment before he blinked it away.

"I know what the question meant," Sophie said her voice beginning to rise in indignation. "I just don't know what he said; I was passing notes to Jamie." Panic began to swell inside of Nico, could this be the attack? "I laughed at one of his pictures and then the policeman looked at me." She shuddered, drawing her arms and Nico's hand around her skinny frame. "And then he said something… it was in a strange language but I knew what it meant and then he shot me."

"What language did he speak in?" Nico asked, feigning nonchalance. He wasn't very good at acting, but hey, this was a seven-year-old girl in the dark being kept alive by a machine, Nico was sure she would fall for it. Sophie seemingly resigned herself to the fact that her 'Guardian di Angelo' either wasn't present for the attack or just was really unobservant. She could pick either and she'd be right.

"It wasn't Spanish or French or Swahili," Sophie said decisively. French; maybe Aphrodite, or Venus? No Sophie didn't have the 'I'm so beautiful' or 'Love is amazing we should love everyone and kill people who don't believe in it' vibe that was present respectively in the Greek and Roman aspects. "I learnt both of them, Miss Conget said I had good pronunciation," she stated proudly. "I remember what it meant in English, he said: 'you shouldn't exist spawn of the Devil', but with lots more growling."

That didn't really help Nico in the distinction between Greek and Roman. Then he thought of the fool-proof question; the one question that set Romans and Greeks apart from one another. Cue dramatic drums and music…

"Do you prefer purple or orange jellybeans?" Nico asked feeling once again, like a complete fool but Sophie took the question seriously taking her time to weigh up the pros and cons of both colours. Nico had always loved orange sweets; they fizzled on his tongue and tasted like days with Bianca; if, you know, they had a taste.

"Purple," Sophie said finally and Nico nodded, storing the information. "Why?" Nico didn't have an answer to that question so he tapped the side of his nose, a sign that always used to infuriate him until he realised it just meant 'no idea' in older sibling talk. He hoped it meant the same in Guardian di Angelos. Sophie seemed to get it, nodding violently and whacking the side of her head rather too hard for Nico's liking. Sophie yawned and leant back, the machine's pulse became quieter, skipping two beats before rising to a higher octave. Sophie's eyes widened and Nico let his demigod instincts take over; he spun around, sword raised.

A single Larva stood at the foot of Sophie's bed. Red eyes glowed menacingly and the pale blue exoskeleton sent shimmering waves rocketing about. "That's the policeman," Sophie shrieked. The machine suddenly went into overdrive, the beeping increased until Nico could barely distinguish one from the next. Sophie collapsed backwards against her pillows and Nico charged at the Larva. Normal demigods wouldn't have any sort of effect on the ghostly creatures, but sometimes being a son of Hades did have its perks; rarely, but they happened. That just happened to be one of those moments, Nico's Stygian iron sword struck the Larva across the chest and the monster glowed red immediately before dissolving into a black pile of whatever's left of a wraith after the soul's sucked out.

"I can touch Larva?" Nico breathed before freezing. Something was missing and then he realised; the sound of Sophie's beating machine had completely stopped. His sword fell from his hand, clanging against the white tiled floor in a series of banging noises so loud that Nico briefly wondered why no one woke. Right, the Mist. He skidded towards the head of the crib, Sophie was still slumped back, her hair splayed out in a dark, webbed tangle. Her chest was still, flattened completely and there was no movement behind her closed eyes that would hint to a slow, peaceful dream. Overwhelmed by a sudden sense of grief, Nico fell back, time seeming to slow down, onto the swivel chair. He barely knew the little girl who'd thought he was an Angel. He was a pale boy, dressed in (according to Hazel) too dark clothes with a disturbing past. Nico laughed dryly, oh and he was living a complete lie, it didn't really matter of course, but secrets weren't his strong suite either.

(Nico cursed himself and his lax thinking when he thought back to that moment, it was just his luck that Fortuna was listening in at that moment and decided it would make a fun twist.)

Seven-year-old Sophie Malaika had thawed his heart, and he hadn't even known it had been cold, and now she was dead. Once again, Nico promised himself that no tears would fall, and none did. He had perfect control over his emotions, and why shouldn't he? He was his Father's son after all.

A thought struck Nico, _the arrow hit her shoulder; how did it kill her? _Nico swiped the rest of Sophie's papers from the table, skipping unimportant details until; 'she's Swahili?' and then the information that he had been unintentionally searching for lobbed him in the face.

_Genetically transferred _(The next word had a coffee stain smudged across it)_: Heart attacks (probability of recovery 19%)_

Nico read and re-read the line three times before kicking the rim of the bed. It didn't help. So in the end, the shooting hadn't killed Sophie, it had been the surprise of seeing the Larva. Nico had a sudden urge to hunt down and kill every Larvae in the States. _At least I have the arrowhead for Lord Cupid,_ Nico thought weakly and he looked at the bloodied lump of metal. _Stupid Lord Cupid,_ he was a rebellious teenager and nobody could take that away from him.

Nico got up from the chair, he had no reason to stay in the hospital now that he had found the arrowhead and it would be easier for everyone if he got back sooner rather than later. Before leaving Sophie's bedside he smoothed back her hair, and then he crossed the room, picking up his floored weapon in the process. He looked back only once and stopped short, Sophie was standing by the bed, or at least it looked like Sophie. She wore a green flat-cap and had a bow and arrow fastened to her back; Bianca. Nico blinked and she was gone, only the little dead girl and the sleeping occupants of the room remained. A sour feeling clung to Nico, even as he trudged down one of the three flights of stairs.

Sophie had called him an Angel and how very wrong she was. _But_, he mused as he crossed the fire-exit; _I'm a damn good di Angelo._

**Notes: Malaika means Angel in Swahili and this takes place after Bianca chooses rebirth and Nico found Hazel but before the switch.**

**Please review!**


End file.
